I started falling in love with riding bicycles in 2000, and as one thing led to another I became fully caught up in Lance Armstrong's incredible Tour de France run by his third win in 2002.

That fascination peaked two years later, when I timed a week of vacation in late July so I could spend the mornings watching live as Armstrong vanquished all pretenders in a decisive series of climbs up the sides of mountains in the Alps. I was all in.

It was about the bike for me, certainly, as my midlife avocation sucked me into the tactics, mystique and spectacle of the sport. But it started with the narrative of cancer survivor, unparalleled champion and tireless advocate for his cause, not to mention the gratification of watching a cocky American make the French really grumpy by owning their signature sporting event.

But in time the myth was first punctured and then shattered by circumstantial evidence, dogged pursuit by a small core of contrarian journalists and the cumulative witness of people who told the truth for reasons including integrity, self-interest and the compulsion of subpoenas. Some of them were among the casualties as Armstrong went about ruthlessly defending the proposition that too good really was true.

The findings released by anti-doping authorities last summer irrefutably branded him as an epic fraud and liar and all but erased him from cycling's record books. But that's not the worst of it.

His disgrace granted credibility to and put the focus on all the people whose lives, reputations and livelihoods he attacked without pause or compunction. That exposed him not only as a cheat, but as a miserable human being.

Some are inclined to cut him slack for the good he did by lending his persona and energy to his anti-cancer foundation, and there's something to that. But there's no escaping that he also used charity as cover for his lies and to supplement his lucrative, bigger-than-sport marketability.

I've watched a lot of Lance over quite a few years on my television. But I saw something new Thursday night at the beginning of his interview by Oprah Winfrey -- Armstrong nervous and playing defense. Not long ago, that was unthinkable.

Armstrong came clean, as far as he went, by telling us mostly things we already knew. But he did it in a measured way, seemingly calibrating his mea culpas to limit his legal exposure and shield his co-conspirators.

In doing so, he might even have opened up a fresh portfolio of lies. Armstrong told Winfrey that he never doped during his comeback in 2009 and 2010, which he characterized as a promise kept to his ex-wife and mother of his three oldest children.

But the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency's dossier against him says the evidence from his "biological passport" -- a program he cited during the interview as cleaning up cycling -- indicates there's less than a one in a million chance of his blood values from those races occurring naturally. Should we take him at his word?

Armstrong said many of the right things and copped to a variety of raps against him. He talked about being disgraced, humbled, ashamed and very sorry.

And he pleaded guilty to being a coldblooded bully who tried to destroy people who didn't cover for his fraud and broke the sport's code of silence. He said he felt bad about that, too.

For me, it comes down to this: I don't believe him. My gut tells me that he found himself trapped in a corner where his usual pugnacious methods failed him, and that the parameters of his confession are a calculated and largely cynical ploy to salvage something of his riches, reputation and stature.

Armstrong said the words but didn't seem able, except when he spoke of his children, to back them with any sense of depth or authenticity. He spoke of a change of heart in ways that didn't persuade me that his heart was really in it.

Toward the end of the interview, Winfrey characterized Armstrong's dishonest, callous and heedless actions as "sociopathic." He didn't object, but said he'd reached a place where he could feel the damage he'd done to other people.

Perhaps. But then under the circumstances he's in, that's what a sociopath would say.